[BSDCert] Unix sysadmin requirements

[Kevin Reiter]

Piotr Klein wrote:
> 
> Not at all !!!
> 
> 
>> Hi All.
>>
>> From my experiences, good admin should have sufficient knowledge 
>> about C programming. He/She sould be familiar with system functions 
>> like:
>> - fork(), waitpid()
>> - open(), read(), write()
>> - socket(), bind(), listen(), accept()
>> - shm*()
>> - ...
>>
>> I can't see the possibility about proper system understanging and 
>> tuning without such knowledge. In the end, FreeBSD is written in C.

Define "system understanding."

Tuning in what context?  Disk I/O?  Network load balancing?  One of them
requires knowledge of C to modify, the other doesn't.

> 
> You are talking about "System Engineer" not "SysAdmin"

Then why did you start your original post with:
"From my experiences, good admin should have sufficient knowledge about C
programming." ?

> 
>> I've found out, that people with poor understanding of C system 
>> functions are also poor admins, when we speak about high volume  servers.
>> They simply can't diagnose/explain/solve heavy traffic problems.

There's that "admins" word again...

> 
> SysAdmin should do much, much more than solve traffic problems

Agreed.

> 
>>
>> If i'd have to make a choice of recruitment, that would be  important
>> topic at the interview.
>>
>> For the purpose of certification, I'd suggest for example a piece (s)
>> of broken/badly written C code with questions about a problem  there.
>>
> 
> again -  System Engineer, Programmer...etc NOT "SysAdmin"

admin = SysAdmin - not Engineer or Developer.

Perhaps you meant to say, "Engineers should have sufficient knowledge
about C .." ?

I'd be willing to bet money that there are a LOT of good, experienced,
high-level *nix admins who don't know a thing about programming in C.
They leave that for for the developers.

Which brings up the subject about the nature of the cert itself - is it an
"Admin" cert or an "Engineer/Developer" cert?  Both would have vastly
different requirements.